Sensopark Berg im Drautal

1st station: Graf’n Säge – breathing exercise
There is not much left to see of the saw in the ditch, but a lonely meadow spreads out in front of it, steaming delightfully in the morning sun. It is ideal for a breathing exercise. Stand in the straddle, throw your arms in the air, stretch your head and take a deep breath. Then stretch the muscles and try to climb the sky. After the stretching exercise, collapse, bend forward, shake out hands, arms and head between straddled legs and blow out the stale air. And that five times in a row, until the blood pulsates in the temples. That’s how we get going. Then walk standing, sometimes with knees to chest, sometimes with heels to buttocks, “waggle” standing, right-left, forward, back and repeat.
Breathing exercise

2nd station: Wildbachweg – groping mosses
Exercise 2 follows on the torrent path to the waterfall, feeling for cushion moss, ferns and lichens, and that barefoot! This means taking off hiking boots and socks and feeling the mosses on the soft and damp forest floor. Walk for at least ten minutes, hiking boots in hand, from moss to moss, lichen to lichen, feeling the forest floor with the soles of your feet. Muddy mosses on which you sink centimeters deep, sandy soils in between, herbs, fallen trees and spruce needles. What remains are freshly perfused feet, which we then extensively frottieren before we stow them back in the mountain boots. The feeling in the shoe is now different, much more alive.

3rd station: waterfall – full bath with spruce twig
Before arriving at the big waterfall, it is best to collect spruce branches. At the foot of the water weir there is a shallow water bed, at the beginning of the wooden bridge over the stream there is a rest bench. Now put down the hiking robe on the bench and cross the icy cold waters. Then flagellate with the brushwood. Then back into the cold waterfall, for another “lat”. The whole organism quivers, the blood rushes to the head. You will feel like newborn, clear in mind and fresh in body. The method is simple: with the primal scream, shouted out at the top of your lungs, you overcome the shock of the cold. The skin contracts, you lose all sense of temperature. “Slouching” helps the body to relax, promotes blood circulation and stimulates the circulatory system. The whole practiced two or three times in a row brings life energy. Admittedly, the exercise is not recommended for people with heart failure. A foot bath will do the trick.

Bathing with spruce brushwood

4th station: forest bench – meditation
The torrent trail continues a few hundred meters further into the deep ditch, but follow the steep and narrow path uphill instead: the Nadelsteig. The “Wadelbeißer” is quickly overcome and then turns into a cattle drive at ground level, at the beginning of which there is a bench. At this resting place we settle down for a short meditation after the strenuous path. We sit down relaxed and prick up our ears to listen to the forest. First the birdcalls, then the light wind brushing the leaves, perhaps the throb of a woodpecker. The dull, soft earth swallows every sound, the longer you look, listen and breathe in the fresh resin smell of the forest, the deeper you dive into your soul and subconscious. Ten to fifteen minutes motionless, completely concentrated, you notice how you slowly withdraw into your innermost being and grow together with your surroundings, pausing in silence.

Forest bench meditation on the Paracelsus path

5th station: Hassler meadow – hand bath
After the meditation break, we continue along the coniferous path, passing blueberry fields and bright green forest shrubs. The path, broadly trodden as a cattle drive, compensates for the steep climb from the ditch. Then we step onto an open meadow from which there is a magnificent view of the Spitzkofel and the Jaukengruppe. The dark lonely mood of the forest evaporates and gives way to a warm sunlit openness. We cross a small stream, now just ideal for an arm bath. Just kneel down, dip your forearms into the water, for ten to fifteen seconds, then pause and repeat. After that, you will cross the magnificent herb meadow, the smell of which is quite different from the spicy forest aroma.

6th stop: Langnerhof rest stop
Via the Sonnleit’n we come to the first farm on the Oberberg, the Hasslerbauern and then to the old Bachlerhaus. Between the stable and the house, the eye spies a small treasure from the Breitegger school: a wayside cross with the Holy Trinity, a corpus on the cross, a white dove above and the good God the Father with a world apple in his hand. Just like this house here, almost every farm has its own protective cross, shrine or conduit. From here it is not far to the Jausenstation Langnerhof on the Oberberg, where we can finally activate our sense of taste. With home-made sausages and freshly baked bread, smoked bacon and home-made butter, it’s easy to live. “Everything homemade,” the host enthuses.

7th station: Oberpirker Mühle – breathing exercise
On the way to the Oberpirk mill we cross lush meadows, a small patch of forest and breathe air that is now and then permeated by intense smells caused by freshly cut wood or freshly piled dung heaps. You’ll pass the old Hauserbauer sawmill, a beautiful Greisenegger wayside cross, orchards and ornamental gardens, and a wooden fire tower. Then, before a sharp left turn, we stand in front of the Oberpirker Mühle, the next stop on our way, and repeat the breathing exercise we already practiced at the Graf’n Säge. The water mill itself is one of the few grain mills that are still completely preserved.

8th station: Goppelsberg church – tactile exercise
From the mill downhill we follow the asphalt path along an oak grove of gnarled trees mixed with young deciduous trees and hazel bushes. A special opportunity for our next tactile exercise to take a closer look at and explore the different types of tree bark, the fine paper bark of birches and beeches, the coarse heavy shell of chestnuts and oaks. The old wooden giants almost magically attract the stroller and invite him to linger in their shade. After a rest stop for tired people, we soon arrive in the village of Goppelsberg, which, like Oberberg, has a renovated beautiful little church.

Hikers hug trees

9th station: Brechlerstub’n – amazement
An attraction awaits us a few steps further on. Passing the Orterhof next to the little church we turn into a field path – straight into the “hell”, a steeply sloping hollow path to the Auernighof. Halfway we come across an old Brechlerstub’n, the heart of the formerly widespread linen production on the Goppelsberg. To this communal room, the peasants brought the “tussled” (torn out by the root) tufts of flax, which had previously been dried and bleached in the fields for two to three weeks. In the Brechlerstub’n the flax was roasted on racks over the fire. More than ten farmers helped together to extract fine “Werch” (for shirts and linens) and coarse “Reisten” (for canvases and yokes) from the raw material. The Brechlerstube was in operation until the end of the 1950s, when the cloth market was flooded with cotton fabrics.

10th station: Auernighof – Meditation
At the end of the cattle drive in the hollow way there is a rest bench, ideal for meditation. From here, once again, you look down on the memorable weather lock between Jauken and Reißkofel, the well-known Ochsenschlucht. Close your eyes and review the Senso journey to this point. Tell yourself the most important experiences out loud, rewind them in your mind like a movie. If you have a schnapps of arnica with you, then unwrap, rub arm and leg joints. Later, when you pass by the orchard of the Auernig farm, you will see one of the most beautiful wayside crosses in the village, a life-size corpus of Christ carved by a local mountain farmer.

11th station: nose fountain – arm bath
A few hundred steps below Auernighof, the Senso trail joins Frallacher Weg, from where we walk back towards the center of the village, passing shady ditches and sunny spots, with a magnificent view of the Drauschleife near Berg. In one of the ditches, an unknown artist has set a carved monument resembling a forest rat, letting water through his nose: finally, a good sip of clean water again, plus a refreshing arm bath. We bend our well-warmed bodies over the trough and dip our forearms into the invigoratingly cold water. Two or three times for twenty seconds each, then we shake our arms and the cycle revives anew.

Nose fountain arm bath on the Paracelsus Way

12th station: village square – end
The last stage of the Paracelsus Way is quickly completed. On the way to the town center we pass the parish church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary from the 12th century and the weathered Karner (ossuary) from Carolingian times two sacral buildings, for which an extra visit program on Sunday after mass is worthwhile. With the little church of St. Athanasius at the bottom of the valley, they are among the oldest buildings in the area. They have survived earthquakes, floods, landslides, Turkish invasions and fires. No less old, but unfortunately no longer in its original state, are the parsonage and the oldest inn in the village, the “smithy”, which hides a wooden ceiling from the 11th century in the northern part of the house.